Theater Review: Bring a tissue to this outstanding 'Les Misérables'

By Iris Fanger, Daily News Correspondent

Thursday

Apr 18, 2019 at 4:12 PMApr 19, 2019 at 12:36 PM

BOSTON - "Les Misérables" brings Jean Valjean back to the Boston stage, as a prisoner chained to the oars of a galley, then released as a man branded by his past, and finally to find freedom in an exemplary life of Christian charity and goodness.

All the while he is bedeviled by a righteous police inspector, Javert, who believes that a man is forever branded by the bad deeds he committed, mirrored by the onstage metaphors of shadows and light. In the mean world first depicted in Victor Hugo’s novel, and transformed into the musical, "Les Misérables," Valjean is only allowed to find peace after death.

Now at the Citizens Bank Opera House in a magnificent touring production that’s packed with splendid voices and breathtaking special effects, "Les Misérables" remains one of the most enduring stage creations, sure to continue to inspire new generations of theatergoers. If you go - and you must - you'll need a hankie as well as your ticket, as you re-live Valjean’s courage despite his suffering, along with the other have-nots of 19th century Paris.

Nick Cartell as Valjean, and Josh Davis as Javert, his nemesis, stride the stage as opposites of the human condition - one a man striving to change, the other set in his beliefs in the constancy of man’s evil nature. They are supported by a stellar group of singer-actors: Mary Kate Moore as the doomed, Fantine; Paige Smallwood as the scene-stealing Eponine; J. Anthony Crane as the depraved innkeeper, Thenardier, with Allison Guinn as his wife-partner in crime; Andrew Maughan as the blessed Bishop of Digne; and the sweet-singing revolutionary Enjolras, given a blazing performance by Matt Shingledecker. Child actors Cate Elefante as Little Cosette and Parker Dzuba as Gavorche were no less masterful in their roles at Thursday’s opening (alternating with two other children at various performances). Joshua Grosso as Marius and Jillian Butler, a 2015 Boston Conservatory graduate, are well cast as young lovers Marius and Cosette.

Published in 1862, "Les Misérables" was first a wildly successful, best-seller, then was transformed into a musical in 1980 with a score by Claude-Michel Schonberg and lyrics in French by Alain Boublil, and next created in English with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. This version premiered in London in 1985 (where it is still running), on Broadway in 1987 ( six years for the original run, plus revivals), and a film released in 2012. Over the decades, the show has won multiple awards and reached millions of viewers. As if that’s not proof of its continuing relevance, a PBS-TV mini-series, adapted from Hugo's book and without music, is currently a Sunday night "Masterpiece" presentation.

Directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell for a 2017 Broadway revival, the changes from the first production are significant in tone to darken the dual plot lines about Valjean’s fate, beginning in 1815, and the ill-conceived but passionate revolution by the idealistic youths on the street barricades of Paris in 1832. The massive turntable that enhanced the action of the original staging has been eliminated in favor of quick-changing projections based on Hugo’s paintings, fronted by three-dimensional platform settings designed by Matt Kinley and lighted by Paule Constable, which serve to represent the passage of years until Valjean’s death. The music is sung-through with few spoken lines by a large chorus that changes characters as needed to tell the story.

Although the pathos of Valjean’s life, the spectacle and especially the remarkable score, studded with memorable songs such as “I Dreamed A Dream,” “Master of the House,” "One Day More,” “On My Own,” and Valjean’s prayer, “Bring Him Home,” that brought down the house in Cartell’s performance, guarantee the musical’s continuing draw, there’s more. One wonders if injustice by authorities with power over less fortunate men and women like that of Valjean’s can ever be erased from human society, or if the divide between the 1 percent and the everyone else must remain a fact of contemporary life.